Topics in Semantics: Negative Polarity Items

Lecture Notes

LEC #	General Topics	Lectures
1–2	Introduction: Environments, operators, and the Condition	Entailment, entailment-reversal, non-monotonicity, negated DPs (PDF)
3	Environments and modified numeral quantifiers	Modified numeral quantifiers with distributive vs. collective predicates, maximal informativity, preview of the explanation (PDF)
4	Strawson entailment and definite descriptions	Strawson entailment, surprise, only, singular definite descriptions (PDF)
5	Strawson entailment and definite descriptions, cont’d	Extension of the entailment relation, decomposing definites, partitives, distributivity operator (PDF)
6	Strawson entailment and definite descriptions, cont’d	Conjunction, type-shifting, event semantics, thematic roles, exhaustivity (PDF)
7	Modality, free choice, and exhaustification	Existential modals, exhaustification, revision of the Condition (PDF)
8	Modality, free choice, and exhaustification, cont’d	Existence presupposition, constraints and requirements on pruning (PDF)
9	Modality, free choice, and exhaustification, cont’d	Exceptives, approximatives, reconstruction, universal modals, mass vs. count nouns (PDF)
10	Towards an explanation	Other modal environments, Hindi NPIs, probability, and explanation (PDF)
11	Non-monotonicity and some challenges	Additivity, singular definites, accommodation, non-monotone quantifiers, desire predicates (PDF)
12	Non-monotonicity and some challenges, cont’d	Intervention, minimizers, and variation (PDF)